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Purpose of the Tutorials | Background Information | Directions | Teacher Support Materials We offer two online tutorials for your students: Help Lee Decide and What Should Maria Do? are online tutorials for adolescent learners, particularly those who are having difficulty in reading and writing in the content areas. The purpose of the tutorials (called "activities" for the students) is to help students develop skills in comparing and contrasting. Click on a title or picture to start an activity. Note: It might take a few seconds for the activity to load.
In these tutorials, students will learn:
People make comparisons all the time. However, students need to learn how to detect and evaluate similarities and differences that are embedded in text. This is especially true as the items being compared/contrasted become more complex. Students need to learn how to decide which attributes of two items should be compared and which similarities and differences are important. They also need to learn how to write texts that compare and contrast ideas. Compare and contrast is one type of text structure. (For more information on text structures, visit our section about text structures). We have chosen to use the term compare/contrast to align with terminology used in schools and curriculum standards. Compare usually refers to finding similarities, while contrast refers to finding differences. However, in common usage when people refer to "comparing" things, they typically imply the need to identify both similarities and differences. Texts that compare and contrast can be written in two general ways: whole-to-whole and part-to-part. In a whole-to-whole comparison, each item is described fully in a different paragraph. In a part-to-part comparison, the attributes of each item are compared within the same sentence. For example, a whole-to-whole comparison of a herring gull and mallard might read:
A part-to-part comparison of a herring gull and mallard might read:
Whole-to-whole comparisons may be somewhat easier to process, but the reader often has to infer the similarities and differences between each item. Part-to-part comparisons may assist the reader in identifying similarities and differences between items, but the writing may seem choppier. The writing that students encounter in actual textbooks and other sources may mix these two styles. For more information on comparing and contrasting and recommendations of web sites, visit our overview of compare and contrast section. The tutorials present different students talking about their plans for the summer. In the first tutorial, Lee is trying to decide what job to choose by comparing the plans of his friends. In the second, Maria has to decide between going to the Grand Canyon or the beach for her summer trip. The students plan to compare/contrast to make their decisions. They apply the relevant strategies for comparing and contrasting. Your student(s) will follow the steps the characters take. They will actually participate in the process. The tutorials are self-directing and self-paced. Essentially all that students need to do is launch a tutorial (called an "activity" for the students) and follow the cues. Depending on the level of your students, they can work alone or in pairs. You may want to select only certain students to engage in a tutorial, or all the students could complete it in a computer lab or as homework. It is important for you to go through the tutorials yourself to determine how to use them most effectively with your students. The
tutorial are introduced by one or more context-setting activity(s)
and followed by additional follow-up activities. We have provided
activities that are related to text structure generally and also
specifically to understanding comparisons in reading and writing.
Feel free to use any or all of them, depending on your student(s). Lesson Plans | Make Your Own Activities | Resources While the student activities are designed to be used independently, we are providing you with some additional teacher supports. These are meant to be used before or after the activity and are meant to deepen students' understanding of compare and contrast. These include lessons and Internet sites which enhance the activities. Help
Lee Decide Lessons What
Should Maria Do? Lessons
One
of the difficulties in teaching the compare and contrast text structure
is a lack of good materials that make text structures explicit.
To provide you with materials to teach compare and contrast skills,
we have written short texts about different topics. In compare and
contrast, two types of formats are (1) whole-to-whole
comparisons and (2) part-to-part
comparisons. For each topic we provide you with one text that helps students learn how to make whole-to-whole comparisons and another for part-to-part comparisons. In addition, for each topic, we have included a graphic organizer in the form of an attribute chart. One version of the chart is blank and another is filled in. We hope that you will find varied uses for the texts and graphic organizers. For example, they can be used to introduce the text structure, for practice, and for assessment. You might also want to use these materials before or after having students engage in our online activities: Help Lee Decide and Help Maria Decide. Additional information on compare and contrast is available by clicking here.
Resources (Links open in the same window)
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